


thou mayest be bound up

by dome_epais



Series: plead thy cause [2]
Category: The Pacific - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Marking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:53:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dome_epais/pseuds/dome_epais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eugene can’t remember if he’s slept four hours straight since the train home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thou mayest be bound up

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Bible, Jeremiah 30:13.

Eugene doesn’t know which way is up, which way to dig himself out of this grave. He can’t hold his breath any longer, but when he opens his mouth, it fills with mud, gritty in his teeth.

His arms move taffy-slow. His fingers can’t gain any traction, slipping through, moving him nowhere. He can smell the death, the rotting and sloppy stench that seeps into everything around it.

He can’t feel anything. He can’t even properly feel afraid. The Marines beat that out of him: he has no more fear of dying.

Slowly, achingly, Eugene claws himself back into his bed, in his bedroom, in Mobile.

He gets out of bed, shivering with sweat even in the muggy June night. He fumbles for his jacket from the night before, digging through the pockets for his tobacco, pipe, matches. Gets to his window and lets the sill hold him up.

It takes too many deep breaths to steady his hand enough to pack and keep a match lit and suck. He puffs the smoke out into the night. His mother complains enough about how it makes his clothes smell as it is.

Eugene can’t remember if he’s slept four hours straight since the train home.

He smokes and looks at the stars and thinks they’re very different from what he saw over there.

\--

Everything is so silent in the states.

Eugene stays inside, with the clinking of silverware the only conversation over dinner. He makes his mother flinch if he smiles, and his father’s eyes are soft and caring when he meets them.

It drives him outside.

The birdsong smoothes his nerves, takes the tension from his shoulders. But he’s stuck with an itchy neck; he expects a sniper right behind him, right, left, ahead.

It drives him back inside, where his mother asks him when he’s going to start on his future.

He’s going out of his skin.

\--

Eugene opens his eyes and he’s in his poncho, rain dripping through his collar down his neck. His weapon is a phantom weight in his arms; the dark is absolute, then clears into shapes.

He can see, suddenly. He can see what’s woken him. Snafu’s there, hand out against Eugene’s shoulder.

Snafu moves his hand, his thumb brushing over and past that leaky collar, finding Eugene’s bone and the clean smooth muscle below.

Eugene takes a breath in, knowing what’s coming.

Snafu’s thumb _drills_ into him, hard, looking for his ribs or his heart underneath or to stop his lungs. Presses so far that it’s going to break his bones or split him in two.

He mouths: _Sledgehammer_ , but Eugene’s gone deaf.

Then he wakes up.

\--

It’s hard to tell what’s real.

Eugene had good dreams while he was living a nightmare. He has bad dreams now that he’s supposed to be safe.

He thinks, sometimes, he might wake up in the middle of his watch. A Jap will be tumbling into his hole, to kill him and Snafu, and it’s Eugene’s fault for sleeping on watch.

That’s either the truth or the worst nightmare of all.

\--

He sits on his porch and he smokes and he knows he has to do something.

Sid is married, and they’re trying to have a baby. Eugene’s brother Edward has one and another on the way. Burgin’s getting married in a few short months.

Eugene doesn’t want anything like that for himself. He doesn’t want _anything_.

\--

Well. That’s not true.

\--

He buys a ticket, with barely a day’s notice to his parents and none for Sid. Eugene is sure Sid won’t really miss him around; he’s been a ghost haunting his own life for too long as it is.

He hugs his parents goodbye and smiles as sincerely as he can. He gets on the train with his seabag of three shirts, two pants, and whatever else the Marines had drilled into him.

In his seat, he packs his pipe, lights it, smokes. Watches land spill past. Tries not to think for as long as it takes.

He has the address for the VA office in New Orleans, and that’s all. He’ll make it work.

\--

Eugene stands outside an apartment door and can’t move.

He thinks he’s gone crazy. What is he doing here? This was a wartime thing. He shouldn’t want it now that he doesn’t…

He _doesn’t need it_.

He repeats it until it’s meaningless. He doesn’t need it. He doesn’t.

Meaningless.

Eugene sucks in a breath and knocks on the door.

\--

Snafu opens it with a half-smoked cigarette in his mouth, shirt off, jeans stained and torn. He stares at Eugene like he doesn’t want to believe he’s really there.

Eugene opens his mouth to say – anything. He doesn’t know what he could say to explain any of this.

Snafu shakes his head and grabs the fabric of his shirt and tugs him inside the apartment.

Eugene’s shoulders meet the wall a foot to the left of the door and it slams the air out of him. The smoke is spat to the ground and Snafu’s mouth fastens to his collarbone and bites like he wants it to scar.

God. Dear God, Eugene wants it to scar.

In a haze, Eugene conscientiously grinds the butt of the cigarette out with the heel of his shoe, and flails one arm until he gets the front door closed.

Snafu has snapped the first button off his white ruined shirt and gotten his mouth onto Eugene’s nipple. He’s biting and grinding it, punishing him for something that wasn’t Eugene’s fault. When he lets up it’s swollen and red across his chest and Eugene can’t breathe.

Snafu drops to his knees and Eugene can’t, can’t, _can’t_ breathe.

Eugene unbuttons his shirt – half for the sake of keeping the rest of the buttons – as Snafu drags at his trousers. It’s so sudden after so long; his underwear is gone and Snafu’s biting around his thighs, his hips.

Snafu’s jaw clamps down tight and sucks and Eugene’s knees give out. Snafu put an arm across Eugene’s hips like an iron bar, the only thing keeping him upright against the wall.

“Snafu,” Eugene pants, keening. He wants… he wants _everything_. He’s always wanted so much. He’s never known how to ask. All he knows is, “ _Please!_ ”

Snafu swallows his cock and Eugene can’t breathe, he’s drowning.

\--

He dreams and he knows he’s dreaming.

Ack-Ack is there, telling him to keep his focus and not to think too hard. Hillbilly tells him that the shortest path to happiness takes the most sacrifice.

Burgie’s asking him where the latest bruise came from, and Eugene’s telling him, “It’s from Snafu. It’s because he loves me.”

\--

“Sledgehammer.”

Eugene wakes like a mortar round sliding into place. He lifts his head knowing what he’ll see, and something in him settles what he sees exactly what he expects.

Snafu is under his arm, his skin smooth and unmarked. He doesn’t need it the way Eugene does. Instead Snafu just stares up at him, lips bitten in and thin.

Eugene doesn’t think he’s ever seen Snafu look uncertain.

“I’m awake,” is what he whispers. He sits up and swings his leg into place over Snafu’s other hip, grinning and pleased. “I’m awake, Snaf, that’s. I’ve been needing that for a while.”

Snafu blinks and his hands land in the crevices of Eugene’s hips, hold him close. Press in, a little; gentle and soft, sliding into the inner parts of Eugene like he belongs there.

Eugene rolls his hips and says, “Oh, Snaf, please. Take me. Keep me. I’m yours.”

Snafu smiles and closes his teeth around the pulse point of his wrist, hard, bruising.


End file.
